Activisim

1. a form of volunteering. 2. A form of individual activity within a social movement group, which is either unpaid or paid. As social movement organizations grow in size, such activity is increasingly professionalized.

Advocacy

Act of pleading, speaking, or interceding for a cause supported by a person or group. Checkoway viewed public advocacy as a strategy in which legislative and administrative advocates, advocacy planners, and advocacy groups advocate for the relatively powerless and in which representatives of traditionally excluded also advocate for themselves. For a history of advocacy within one profession (social work) and more developed defition.

Benefactory

an organized, network of social relations, with an authentic organizational identity and set of identifiable beneficiaries. Classified as on of three types: intrinsic benefactories (such as self-help groups and other member benefit organizations), extrinsic benefactors (organizations whose benefatories are primarily external to the organization), and mixed benefactors (organizations with a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic benefactors, such as most religious congregations)

Cause

in the nonprofit sector, the side of a question or controversy espoused by an individual, party, social movement, or nonprofit group. Roue examined the ambiguity inherent in the meidator and spokesperson role that nongovermental organisations feel in defending the cause of indigenous peoples.

Charity

1. disposition to think favorably of others, of their thoughts and actions, and to make allowance for their shortcomings. 2. nonprofit group, usually formally organized, that provides one or more public benefits and receives a significant amount of its revenue form donations.

Citizen Participation

individual participation in a citizen group or in other local political voluntary action, whether group or individual, conventional or deviant. In general ,local political participation. Citizen participation is broader than civic engagement, in that, unlike the latter, the former is not centered strictly on duty, responsibility, or obligation. Citizen participation is narrower than community involvement, however, since the second also refers to nonpolitical action while it, too, is nt confirmed to matters of duty or responsibility.